


Fairytale Girl

by aliceoutofreality



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Genre: Attempted Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 14:39:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17983013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliceoutofreality/pseuds/aliceoutofreality
Summary: An aspiring Bluebeard marries a young peasant girl and brings her home. She is determined not to let him finish her story the way he wants to write it. A re-telling of the Bluebeard fairytale.





	Fairytale Girl

**Author's Note:**

> Fairy tales are cultural artefacts, and they can be written to say anything at all. The original story was a warning to women to obey their husbands. This is a story about rewriting the story that others are writing for you. Warnings for: domestic violence, sexual content, attempted sexual assault, violence. All the kind of nasty stuff that will turn up in a Bluebeard fairytale.

She is the youngest of their ordinary farming family. The youngest of nine, everything is handed down to her. Clothes, food, toys, stories. Whilst her brothers are out farming with their father and her sisters are keeping house with their mother, she sits at her grandmother’s feet with a pile of yarn to be wound and listens to the stories her siblings have grown too old for. She tells her of witches and princesses, dragons and ogres, princes and castles and then she learns the old tales as well. The ones that end in blood and misery and death, the tricks of the villains, the strengths of the heroines, the wise words of the elders. All of it she tucks away inside. In summer she weaves flower crowns and plays at coronations and queenly ways of behaving. In winter she listens to the rustles and whispers of the sleeping plants and whispers her replies into the cold, hard earth. She dances on her way back from church in the sun, moving to her own internal music. People in the village and her family call her many names, some sweet, some cruel. Cloud-brain. Fairy-girl. Silly. Stupid. Selfish. Touched. Useless. Whatever. 

She grows up into a beautiful young woman who works hard, tells beautiful stories, and cares for her aging parents with a gentle heart. Then one day a prince comes. Her prince comes. He stops at their farm and asks for milk and bread, and her parents have her take them to him, and he looks at her the way a wolf sees a lamb. Her parents believe this is how young men look at those they love, and maybe it is. She knows it is the way a predator looks at their prey. She serves him the milk and bread and some small apples they grow in the orchard and she blushes when their fingers touch and he smiles at her in way he thinks is dashing and handsome but never actually touches the cold of his eyes. Then he retreats to the kitchen and she listens to him talk with her parents. She clutches the tray close to her and thinks and thinks and thinks. They will want to marry her to him because he is rich. He has rings on his fingers and new clothes and a fine horse and saddle and he walks like a man who owns more than the village put together could ever imagine. He will want her to marry him because he is a wolf who has seen a pretty deer and wants to sink his teeth into her throat. She wants to marry him because he is rich and stupid and thinks he can make a meal of her. She has heard all the stories. She knows the tricks. The smart girls, the third sons, the witches’ plots. She knows that evil sometimes lurks under a fair face. She knows that when princes die, princesses take over. She knows that she is smart, and that she can be that princess if she stays her nerves.

When she comes back in, her parents are looking at her with such excited smiles and he is so smug and self-satisfied. She clutches the tray closer and blushes on cue and nods silently when he presents her with his proposal. They take her for overwhelmed and shy, just what he likes, and she lets him return in a few days and slip the ring on her finger. Everyone in the village talks: some say that fairytale girl got her fairytale ending, who would have thought it? Some mutter with jealousy that he’s not really a prince, only a baron’s son. Some look at her with pity and say it will all end in tears, no prince would choose a permanent wife in a village girl. It will all end in tears, they mutter over their drinks. He hosts a marriage in their village that lasts for days. There are hundreds of dishes from across the kingdom that could feed all the people in the village for a year, enough beeswax candles to drive away the night and create a false day, more fancy people than have ever set foot in their village in living memory. He gives her a dress that takes so long to do up and that clings so tight to her skin but she lets her mother and sisters weave meadow flowers into her hair. She will not be parted from her roots so easily.

He lets her say her goodbyes to her family but piles her into the carriage quickly, the rich guests laughing bawdily. She refuses to let fear move her. She will see her family soon again. They drive for many hours and many miles and she wills herself to sleep. Be a doe, a lamb, a kitten, a pretty harmless soft thing. Let him see your neck, let him think he has you. When she wakes he is staring out of the window, hands rubbing on his thighs. She watches him from hooded lids, taking in his face when he is not being watched. She was right. It is flat and expressionless. It scares her more than his smile. This is a an evil wizard who will charm a beautiful girl back to his castle and poison her from the inside out. He is not her prince but she is her own princess. She closes her eyes before he turns back to her and tries to keep the rancid fear from bubbling up. It will not help her now.

She wakes again once they pull up to her new home and she stares at the huge house with something like horror and fury and disgust bubbling in her stomach. How is it possible that you can make a house this huge? How is it fair? How is it right? There are people starving in her village and this house has more rooms than her whole village has houses. It is ugly as well, a hideous, warped thing that looms above her with twisted towers and spires and empty windows and she pulls her little bag closer. This is a house that eats people. It swallows the soul piece by piece until you come out a hollow shell. Still, she lets her husband take her hand and guide her out and towards the door. She passes rows of stony-faced servants and nods to them and smiles and gets nothing in return. Her husband introduces the butler whose face is a smooth mask and his voice a monotone mumble and a sour-faced housekeeper who looks at her with distaste and faint mockery tinged with weariness. No-one here will help her. Fine. She will help herself.

Her husband shows her around the house with an air of smug superiority. He shows her every rug, every painting, every awful sculpture and tapestry. There’s so many rooms that she loses track, each full of so many pointless things. Who needs this many things? Who needs to pile their life high with so much that means so little? She feigns interest and admiration and overwhelmed trembling, letting her husband place his hand on her waist and pull her close. She can feel eyes on her and knows they are being watched. There must be a thousand hidey-holes and peep holes in every room. She will have to be careful. Their loyalty is to their master, not her. She cannot trust them. He shows them a picture of his family; his father in Imperial uniform, his mother in high necked stiff dresses, himself in a miniature guards uniform. Every figure in the portrait looks cold and unsmiling and she wonders what it is to grow up in such a big house with no love at all.

She lets her husband show her to their bedroom, lets him pick out a new dress for her from her extensive closets. She lets him undress her. Oh, it is a terrifying, wonderous thing. He pulls a knife from somewhere on him as if to cut right through her lacing but she squeals as if in awe (not fear like she really feels, did he really have that all through their wedding?) and insists he unlaces it. She places a finger on his pouting lips, brutish destruction denied, and smiles sweetly. For our daughter, when she marries… she says. His eyes spark with the bestial lust of breeding come to pass. He unlaces the dress instead. He slides it down her body and she is bared to him and she knows that there is more than one pair of eyes on her. He kisses her bare skin tenderly, although she feels the press of teeth under feather-light kisses. She knows he is putting on a show of kindness to toy with her emotions, feels the shifting of wolf-appetite beneath his skin. This kindness won’t last long and she braces herself for the full force of his hunger to be unleashed.

Their romantic moment is interrupted by a knock at the door and her husband buries a furious growl in her shoulder. He storms away and flings the door open and she realises she is exposed in the doorway. She raises her head and ignores what is happening at the door, moves over the bed and the new dress laid out instead. They are simply servants. She cannot show weakness. She ignores the angry words her husband is spitting at the interrupting man. She thinks she recognises the smooth, cool tones of the butler. You have to have a special level of patience to be so calm towards a spitting viper. Her husband snarls and slams the door shut and she hides her shudder. He is ranting and muttering and pacing behind her and she feels a strange sense of relief. He is a child. Her husband is a child. He is not the ancient wizards of the fairy tales who has spent years perfecting his craft. He is a spoiled child who chose a common girl to test his monstrous craft on. He thinks she is all his to refine his methods on, a simple rung in his ladder of monstrosity. She breathes out and steadies herself and lets him help her into a new dress: preens and beautifies herself and strokes his hair and kisses him gently. She soothes the beast inside him, and at the same time she knows that her presence only enrages it. 

He tells her in a low, struggling voice that he has to go away. That he has business. Business for a little more than a month, far away from here. She frowns at him and assesses the way his brow furrows. He is lying. Not about the business, but about how sad he is about leaving. He guides her to the bed and holds out a ring of keys from his belt. Oh. Oh, he must not know that peasants can tell fairy tales as well. She knows this one. The one with the ring of keys and a room that should never be opened. The man who lures his wife into failure. The room full of bodies. What bodies would he have yet? She is his first wife, him being so young. Perhaps they were his father’s, or even his mother’s, or perhaps just servants and now he has moved onto more interesting prey. Still she watches the keys with big doe eyes and lets him explain this trap to her. She nods frantically when he shows her the tiny little key and swears solemnly not to ever open that door that he explains exactly how to get to. She sees the sadistic glint in his eyes as she takes them in her hand, and pecks him on the cheek to hide her fear. This man will devour her whole if she puts a foot wrong. 

They have dinner together at least, as her husband’s valets gather everything he will need. It is wonderful decadent food that she reels from. So much honey and milk and meat and spices. She eats little enough that she isn’t full, not too much that she is sick. Her stomach still feels queasy anyway. She compliments the cooks, and lets her husband feed her dessert, and then when dinner is done he is up and gone with a final kiss. She is all alone in a big house full of judgemental eyes and a trap all done up for her. She will not go quietly. First she explores her new home. She opens every door, explores every nook and cranny. Every single drawer and cupboard is hers to explore. Libraries and bedrooms, bathrooms and lounges, art galleries, ballrooms, music rooms, studies, smoking rooms, tea rooms, sports rooms, wunderkammers, solariums, even workshops. She starts at the top, in the attics and towers, and works her way down to the servant’s quarters. They may not wish to help her but she will still be kind and friendly. She asks for all their names and shakes their hands and smiles warmly at all. They are disdainful but polite and she wonders if this is how all servants across the land act to their own master’s new wives, or if it is just her. Her and her village upbringing, her dark skin, her wild black hair, her naivety. She wonders if they know the extent of her husband plans for her. 

That night she has servants bring her food in bed, citing melancholy at her husband leaving so soon, and thinks and thinks. She needs to know what is in the room now, she knows that. It is a trap for her, yes, and unlocking the door will spring the trap but she needs to know what her husband has planned for her. She needs to be three steps ahead of him at all times, or she will be extinguished. She needs to control the house. It will be difficult but it needs to be done. The first step… The key is what is in that room. The key… The key… She lifts the little key and stares at it, scrutinises it. She has no doubt that he has put effort into making it like the one in the story, to suck up blood and stain when she inevitably drops it. So she could hold on tight, but there must be other ways that he could tell. Dye in the keyhole, something to mark her shame. As she thinks a pin in her hair scrapes her neck and her hands go instinctively to it. It’s one of her own, one she made herself. That’s it. Her elder sister had married a metal-worker, and she had picked up on some of the skills. The people in the village had scorned her for working jewellery. Making jewellery was hardly a skill worthy of note. Trinkets and baubles may be pretty but hardly useful, and she was a village girl. Use was paramount. But now, now she is a lady. A lady of leisure. Ladies are expected to have hobbies, especially one as delicate as jewellery making. 

Next morning, she makes a list of everything she will need and finds the butler who listens it with a raised eyebrow and an assurance that they will find her a workshop. He is a little perturbed at the need for fire but she assures him it will only be a small one for her own moulds. It takes less than a week for a workshop to be found and made ready for the standards of a lady, and she thanks everyone graciously. She orders some work clothes, and pretends she doesn’t hear the servant girls snicker as she walks the halls in them. She starts with pretty jewellery, simple things. She knows they will have made copies of the keys, and she can tell that every night there’s someone new sneaking in to see what she is doing. Molds are shifted from where she left them, the coals a little disturbed. They won’t find anything. She makes brooches and rings and hairclips, orders jewels and metals and paints. She even starts to decorate the ring of keys, the beginnings of a chatelaine for the lady of the house. She makes little moulds of pin designs and jewel holders and decorations and casts them herself. It’s pleasant, honestly. Some of the serving girls even look at them approvingly so she makes pins with her husband’s family crest on it and hands them to the servants as tokens of their service to her in this new era. Then, once they are placated and soothed and the midnight visits to her room stop, she starts on the key.

She presses it into the soft clay and bakes the mould until hard. She melts metal in her little crucible until molten and carefully pours it in. Within seconds the metal is cooling and a perfect little key sits in the clay. So hideously simple. Does he really think her such a simpleton? She pries it out and compares it to the original. It is nearly perfect, all it needs is a little filing. Once it is done there are two little keys on the table. One is gold and sparkling, one of a deep bronze. The gold one goes back on the keyring. The bronze one goes on a chain around her neck. The first step of her survival is complete.

She waits a number of nights, distracts herself with more jewellery until she could have conceivably lost interest and she has the rhythm of the sleeping house memorised and she can tell the quietest darkest hour when she will not be discovered. She takes a hooded lantern that she has been decorating and puts on an old nightgown from the back of the closet that she can burn when this is done and puts a handkerchief at her bosom and descends the stairs to the little room. She uses her mock key and opens the door without difficulty or alarm. She steels herself and so she does not drop the candle or lose her wits when she sees the bodies of the servant girls in this little torture chamber. They have been desecrated, violated, tortured hideously. She says a quick prayer and locks the door again and carefully pulls the key from the lock. She uses a double folded handkerchief and wraps it tight. Then she goes back to bed and dreams of what she could make out of those poor girl’s faces under the blood and carnage. 

The next morning she is so tired. So weary. Still, she goes to her workshop. She keeps the key in the lock and double checks for secret peepholes everywhere. Only then she examines the key. It is dark with crimson, the inner layers of the handkerchief stained as well. It looks like blood but she is sure it must be dye that does not dry until properly treated. She drops the false key into the crucible with the other scrap metal, burns the handkerchief and the old nightgown on the fire, turning the coals until there isn’t a single scrap of fabric left. The metal melts away, leaching dye into all the rest. She makes it a little heart pendant and hangs it on the chatelaine, a warning and a reminder. She will not forget what he is. She will hold it close and let it fuel her. Then she retreats back to bed. She wraps herself in blankets and sleeps for the day but she is no less tired. She requests sweets and treats to be bought for her but she finds the sweetness sickly. She bathes for hours but it barely warms her inside. Eventually she breaks instead. She wails into her pillow and curses everyone who let this man steal her away and trap her. She screams and sobs and throws things, cursing at the cruel world where a rich man can lay traps to kill women and no-one will stop him. She cries like a child. What has she got herself into? After she wears herself out crying, she starts to think. She is alone here for two more weeks. This is not a bad thing. It means she has time to work. When he comes back, he will scrutinise her, will want desperately for her to have fallen for his trick. The key is still plain gold and she will just need to be very good at lying. The next issue will be the servants. They will take his side. They will but those girls in the chamber did not disappear to blind eyes. Everyone must know what happened to them, or at least suspect and be burying those suspicions deep down inside them. In this huge house there must be at least one person who actually cared about them.

She pulls herself out of her seclusion after a few days, explaining to the servants that the euphoria and shock of marriage and leaving her family had taken its toll and left her exhausted and emotional. She washes, puts on one of her new dresses, and decides to take on some of her wifely duties. The housekeeper dutifully shows her to the files of staff and she thanks her cordially. She starts by looking at the staff now and their history. The ones who have been around longest she makes a note of: they will undoubtedly be loyal and will not help her. The ones who are newest she makes note of as well: they may be more easily swayed to help her. Then she looks at the staff that are noted as having moved on. There they are, a few pages down. Little grainy pictures of two girls whose faces she can match up to the ones mangled in the secret room. She notes down where they came from, where they worked, how long they were at the house. One was a scullery maid, the other a laundry maid. Low class girls, girls she could have been if she lived closer to this house. She feels in her soul the depths of sorrow. He’s going after girls nobody cares about. He thinks nobody will care about her. That’s his mistake. He made her a lady. He gave her a double-edged blade of power and she will grasp it and hold it and use it even as her hands bleed. No more women will die in this house, she vows to herself.

She organises meetings, one on one, with every member of staff. She spends hours talking with each member, learning their history with the house and their the family. She makes notes; tactical assessments of their capabilities and their threat to her, where their loyalties lie, what areas of the house they oversee, who they have under them. She talks with the the butler, the footman, the valet, the housekeeper, the cook, the house maids, the kitchen maids, the scullery maids, the laundry maids, the stable boys, the gardeners, the gamekeeper, and the groundskeeper. All are polite and answer her questions as though they are not lying through their teeth. Under untrustworthy she puts the butler, the footman, the valet, the housekeeper, the cook, the gamekeeper, and the groundskeeper. She will have to avoid them. That will be difficult, as they are the ones she will have to interact with most, but they have their lives and she has hers. She pulls the strings here. She mentions the names of the girls in the room when she’s talking with the maids, asks their opinion on whether they would need another helping hand now there are two people in the household, possibly more soon. That she could possibly re-employ them. Each maid reacts in some way to the names. Some look away, some breathe deeply, some let tears well in their eyes, some clench their fists. The last two categories, she makes a special note of. On that final list, she has 4 names. 4 names in a staff of 20. She is so outnumbered. 

That night, when she goes to bed, she tells herself the stories her grandmother told her over and over until she falls asleep, trying to remind herself that in fairy tales, the smart and the good always prevail. Evil always fails. Except this isn’t a fairy tale. This is her life and if she puts a foot wrong she will die and another woman will be bought in to suffer at her husband’s hands. She sleeps fitfully, and in the morning she calls a meeting of the girls on the final list. Her husband will be returning soon and she needs to be ready. She doesn’t know what else he will do to her once he gets over the fact that she avoided his trap. She gathers the trustworthy servants, four young girls like her, and sits in front of them. Folds her hands. Breathes. She tells them that she knows what her husband did to those girls, that she saw their bodies, and she wants revenge. She wants to survive and not let this happen to anyone else. They stare at her in shock for what feels like hours, and she wills herself not to break and reminds herself of how to get any girl who objects out of the house before she can tell anyone. One of the girls on the end, pale and blonde with red apple cheeks and huge eyes, starts to cry softly and the others crumple. They look at her with the broken gazes of girls who know too much, who know that they could be next but have nowhere else to go. She steels herself. She was those girls a few weeks ago. No longer. 

She relays her plan to them, presses the need for caution and secrecy and reminds them what will happen if anyone else realises what is happening. She also reminds them that if they sabotage this, she will have them removed from their position immediately and removed from the house. They stare back at her and nod and pledge their aid. She adjusts their routines so they will cross paths with her and then she goes back to her room and collapses. So much could go wrong. So much could fail. So many delicate plates spinning in the air to be juggled. She has her wits, and her stories, and her knowledge. Currently she is three steps ahead from him. She just needs to stay that way.

When she wakes the next morning there is a letter from her husband telling her he has just left his business, and should be returning home in the next few days. She finds her chest clutches and she struggles to breathe. He is going to come back, and he is going to try and break her. She is a toy, an object, a thing to be played with until she breaks and can be replaced. He has power and money and an entire cadre of servants and a maze of a home at his disposal. She has her will and the knowledge of what he is and her stories and the knowledge that to survive, she may have to give up little bits of herself. That night she takes a long bath with luxurious bath salts, treats herself to face masks and hair masques and hearty foods and allows herself a night to be beautiful and wonderful and happy. 

Then her husband returns. He sweeps her up with kisses when she greets him in the hall, made up and perfect for him, and holds her a little too tight and too close. He hands her piles of gifts and presents and trinkets and she coos over them all and snuggles up to him and plays her role perfectly. He doesn’t ask for the keys back, not just yet. Instead they have dinner and relax and then he takes her up to their room and finally, finally beds her. It is strange and painful and doesn’t seem to feel like it’s something she could enjoy but she lets herself relax. She lets herself enjoy the fact that he looks at her with bestial lust. She is a thing to be desired, isn’t that good? The good feeling fades when he finishes with a grunt and rolls off her, falling asleep almost instantly. This is what her sisters and the village girls giggled about but really? She gets up slowly, carefully, and makes her way to the bathroom to clean herself up and feels hideously dirty all of a sudden. 

Still, she survives day to day. The first time he reminds her of something that he never said, she simply smiles and responds with her own thing that never happened. It is a nasty game meant to erode her confidence in her mind but she can play it as well. She hides her glee at the glimmer of confusion that runs across his face before he agrees to her invention with a hasty note to the butler. They go like this, happy but fake, for a number of weeks until he asks for the keys back. She hands them back with a smile, placing them in his hands with the shiny gold key on top, spotless and perfect. The cloud that passes over his face this time is so dark and furious she has to step back before he hides it under a sickly sweet smile. How obedient she is, he praises her. How lucky he is to have such a perfect wife. The cold sweetness of the words send a chill through her soul. That night is the first night he wraps his hands around her throat as he pounds away inside her and squeezes until her vision goes dark and blurry. She lies beside him when he is sleeping and knows that it has started. 

He has his business which keeps them apart most days, and so she plans and thinks instead. She does her metalwork and embroidery and reading and sketching, plays the piano badly in the music rooms. She talks to herself and the plants in the hothouses, rummages through the curiosity cabinets, stays up late in the observatory towers to watch the stars, rides horses around the lands. Being a Lady is so boring. Still, she also steals samples of her husband’s handwriting and talks with her serving girls and keeps her workroom locked up tight. Every woman deserves a place of her own, like your study my love. Please respect that. Oh, he boils over and hits her that night but it must be unrelated of course. Still, he obeys. He takes revenge in many other ways. He takes her hunting when he knows she can’t abide it, buys her furs when she says he hates the idea, buys her dresses and clothes in colours and styles he knows do not flatter her. So she keeps playing her own little game: asks the cook to make them meals she knows he will hate, makes more plans for things that he doesn’t know about and feigns naivety and tears when he objects, makes stupid comments and plays up her inferior upbringing when appropriate, turns his tricks back on him over and over. She fights him with all the weak female submission in her body.

She continues to work in secret, forging a will that gives her all property and control after his death. That is the end plan, of course. The only way this will play out. Either she dies, or he does. It is a perfect forgery. She’s very proud of herself. Then she comes into her workshop one day and there is the valet in the room, her forged will in his hands. She takes a deep breath and closes the door behind her. It’s just him and her in this little workroom and she watches how his eyes fix on her chest as he raises the will. His grin is wide and hideous and he steps forward with bestial intent in his eyes. It’s okay my pretty. This is how it works here. This is how it’s always worked. Her mind races at the implications of those words. His notes said he’s worked in this house since her husband was a young man. This is how it’s always worked. No wonder her husband is like this. He places a hand on her arm and slides it up and his breath is heavy and hot on her cheek. She reaches out with her other hand at the same time as leaning in, as though to offer up her neck. He leans in and his teeth press against her skin and his hand starts to grope at her chest. She wraps her hand around a pair of pliers with long thin jaws and she knows what she has to do to survive. She brings them up and plunges them into his neck, over and over and over. She drops them as he falls, bleeding out against her, and frantically pushes the will down her corset. She pulls the bodice of her dress until it rips open obscenely. He stares up at her from the ground, blood bubbling up from his lips, and only then does she scream. 

She screams and screams and kicks him in the face when he tries to reach for her dress with his bloody hands and opens the door and stumbles out and continues to scream as servants come running. The girls she trusts flock around her and there is a hubbub that is cut down the middle as her husband arrives. He sees her covered in blood and trembling and with a torn dress, looks beyond her to the dead valet and he sighs deeply. She gets hurried away with the servants to her room and she bids all but the girls she trusts leave. She places the will in her lock box and puts the key in a hidden space in her jewellery box and changes from her blood stained dress into her nightgown. She curls up in bed and asks them to leave her and then she cries and cries and cries and cries. They bring her warm wine and a light soup for dinner but the smell makes her retch and vomit in the bathroom. She lies in bed and shakes and shivers and trembles uncontrollably and reminds herself that it was her or him. Her or him. Her or him and she got lucky today. The next one might as well just go straight to her husband. She needs to be more clever and she needs to start acting more quickly. Things could go downhill any second.

Her husband comes into their room. His has a face like thunder and he is trembling in every limb. He slams the door and stands at the end of the bed staring at her cowering form as though he is a thread waiting to snap. When he does it is hideous and overwhelming. He grabs her by the ankles and drags her down the bed, straddling her prone body and beating her with his bare fists so savagely she cries out and begs then screams. He beats her face and her body over and over with that furious snarl on his face. He grasps her by the hair and shakes her like a doll, throws her across the room like she weighs nothing. What did you do with him? What did you do to tempt him? Why would you flirt with him like that? You’re mine, how dare you attract servants to you. Through her screaming and begging she understands. She has been told this since a girl two villages over was violated and killed by a worker on the farm she cleaned at. She must have smiled at him too long. She wasn’t being demure. She must have wanted him. Her own fault really. It’s the same here. Her husband cannot see women as anything other than sexual objects that want their own demise. When he finally leaves her a pile of blood and bruises on the floor she smiles through bloody teeth and she knows what to do to really drive him mad.

Soon after, her girls arrive, a trembling flock of little birds. Everyone heard her screams, the impact of his fists, and knew to stay away until his rage had subsided and they could intervene without fear to their own safety. They pick her up off the floor and run her a bath and when they finally clean her up and let her see herself in the mirror she smiles even harder. She is covered in deep bruises. Throbbing purple and blue and red and there on her cheekbone is a print of her husband’s signet ring. How stupid he is. She gives the girls her workshop key and tells them to gather her wax sealing kit. She lies on the bed and they gently pour the hot wax over the indent in her skin. When it’s done they show her a tiny wax seal with the signet of her house on it and she bares her teeth in a vicious smile. That night she gets clay from her mould and remakes the signet. Pours the wax on the will, seals it, locks it back away again. She has the final piece she needs to start her move against him. That night she is in so much pain but she bears it. When she wakes in the morning every muscle is cramped up and she is kept in bed whilst her girls care for her. Her husband left last night, they tell her, with the valet’s body in the carriage to be disposed of far from the house. They do not know when he will return. She doesn’t care. They surround her with warm stones in towels and she takes intermittent baths but mostly she sleeps. She is not disturbed. In the morning she finds only a platter of small pastries cold outside her room and she knows it is a small revenge from the cook for upsetting the balance that ruled this house for so long. It does not matter.

After two days her husband returns. He returns with his own black eye and a bunch of roses for her, an expression like a kicked puppy on his face. He almost cries when he sees the bruises on her body and face but he can’t keep the tiny little smile off his face when he sees the stark bruise of his house signet. A claiming mark. He tells her in a low, sincere voice that the valet will never hurt her again and that it has all been dealt with and that he’s so sorry for how he reacted, he was just outraged that any filthy servant thought he had a right to lay his hands on his wife, the Lady of the house. She strokes his hair and accepts all his apologies with a burning rage in her stomach. As she cradles him she smells rose perfume on his clothes. She lets him bring her dinner in bed and run her a warm bath with soothing oils and medicines and care for her even though his handprints line up with her bruises as he does so. Life goes back to a normal that involves him pampering her and caring for her and her living the life of a happily married woman. She sits at his side and lets him feed her tidbits but inside she is scheming. She needs to break him. Underneath all that bluster and bravado her husband is an angry child and she can beat an angry child. He thinks with his fists and his power. She just needs enough weight behind her. She needs to get the servants behind her. How do you get a house full of servants to follow you and not their master? The answer is so simple. You get the king’s loyal sheriff to follow you, and the rest will fall into line. She needs to make the butler loyal.

She gathers her girls and asks about the butler, what they think of him. Their opinions are most the same: he’s dull as ditchwater, an open book with nothing but blank pages, he’s served the house longer than anyone, was the butler to the previous master of the house. Unease begins to settle in her stomach, fear that this won’t work, until the smallest of the girls speaks up. Wide brown eyes and mousy hair, a little slip of a girl. He warned me, when I first began working here… Don’t be alone with the master of the house, or the valet, or the groundskeeper. He cares about us, even if he can’t show it. Slowly the girls start to nod, each of them dredging up the same memories. When the valet asked me to help him prepare a room for guests, the butler told him I was too busy. When the cook told me to pick up vegetables from the gardens, the butler told her to send an older girl instead. He’s a good person. She breathes so very deeply. He’s a good person, just trapped in an inescapable situation. She nods and thanks them for their help. She can do this.

Her husband leaves for business for a few days and so she spends a day after simply thinking. Is this what she wants to do? Is this how she wants to use her body, to trade for aid? It’s the only thing she has left. The house is her husband’s, all the things inside it, all the money she has, it is all his. She has nothing to give except her body. She hopes he will take it. She finds the butler in his office on a middle floor in the middle of the day, the rooms around silent as servants scurry and complete their never-ending tasks. She has dressed for the occasion: the nightgown that makes her look even younger than she is, hair loose around her shoulders, bruises and cuts still visible on her body. She is the epitome of the waif her husband sees every time he looks at her. 

She slowly pushes the door shut and when she turns back he is standing looking at her, tense like a startled animal. She smiles softly, sweetly and lowers her eyes like a delicate maiden. She hears his startled breath as she pushes the nightgown off her shoulders, lets it pool around her feet and steps out of it. She is bare to him and she knows he sees everything. Her body, lithe and too strong for a lady, the slight belly of too many rich foods and too little work in the past few months, bruises a dark and glowing galaxy across her skin. When she looks up at him he is gripping the side of his desk so hard the knuckles are white and his face is both panicked and lustful. He is trembling all over and she steps forward, begging with her eyes. She doesn’t know what she is saying with her eyes until he steps forward and slowly, carefully pulls the nightdress up her body where she had let it slip.

She frowns up at him and he sighs so deep and so sad. Little bird what are you doing? She doesn’t have an answer she can give. She just presses herself closer to him, the warmth of another human body. This isn’t about revenge anymore, this is solace. Comfort. He wraps his arms around her and sighs again. You are such a beautiful young woman and he just can’t see it. His hands cup her face and they are trembling and he looks at her with such sadness. Right then she knows that he thinks that she is a dead woman. He might as well be holding a corpse. So? She is not a corpse yet, and what is there for either of them to lose. She has seen his files. The pension he has will not give him comfort for a month once he leaves, once he leaves the house he doesn’t have a chance. This is his once chance to have something for himself. She will let him have all of her to himself. She leans up on her tiptoes and presses her lips to his and relishes the way he starts in surprise but melts into her embrace.

When he kisses her back it steals her breath and when he noses at her neck to kiss and nip at her skin she can hear him muttering. How could he hurt such sweetness? Don't worry my sweet, I won't hurt you. I'll make it good sweetheart, you won't even think about him. She believes him and surrenders to him and he makes good on his promise. He lays her across the desk and she lets her cries of pleasure loose through the halls. Gods, is this what she has been missing out on? This man is twice her age but he plays her body like a finely tuned instrument and coaxes sounds from her throat she would feel embarrassed about if he did not smile so devilishly when he hears them. From behind the door she hears giggles and murmurs and knows they have an audience. Good. Let them know she has made her husband a cuckold to his own servant and that this mere servant has given his lady more pleasure in an hour than her husband has in the months she has lived with him.

When the pleasure that he has stoked in her body crests her body spasms and her vision blurs and he holds her tight around him and marks her neck with his teeth. When the wave subsides she is in his arms on the desk, covered in sweat, and she can hear the laughter and noise outside. She stretches and gasps and brings him back up to kiss him almost frantically. She is a dead girl dancing. She deserves this pleasure. When he helps her up off the desk she wraps herself in her robe and kisses him again, long and slow and deep. Tomorrow again, yes? The groan he makes sends shivers through her body. Oh little bird you will be the death of me yet but yes. Tomorrow. She strokes his cheek and smiles softly and leaves his office to a hall so silent and quiet it is almost magical. Oh her husband’s servants are so fleet-footed.

 

She makes her way back to her room and runs a bath and when she enters her bedroom again her servant girls are there all wide eyed. They look at her smug face and cannot hide their shock as she raises an eyebrow and only smiles. The one on the end, deep brown eyes and long dark hair, starts to laugh incredulously. Soon all the girls are laughing as she settles herself into her bath, sighing and moaning as she settles in. They crowd around her bath and they start to gossip as girls are wont to do, asking lewd questions and giggling and gasping. She gives them the following orders: you may giggle about this and gossip about this but do not tell her husband why. A cuckolding is far more effective when he does not know it. They nod and giggle and smirk and she lets them off to spread their gossip. That their lady is lying with their butler. That the butler gave her more pleasure than her husband ever did. That she screamed so loud all could hear it down the halls. She settles back in her bath and wonders if it was a good idea to let him rut her. She decides that it does not matter. By the time a baby could be born she or her husband will be dead and it will not matter. 

Idly, she thinks about how long that session with the butler took her. She has four days until her husband returns. How many times can she make her husband a cuckold before he returns? The answer, it turns out, is many. In many places around her husband’s mansion. The last night before her husband returns she brings the butler into her wedding bed and dresses him in her husband’s finest dress robes and calls him my lord just to hear the growl he makes. Afterwards she wraps her arms around him and rests her head on his shoulder and mentions so carefully that she knows what her husband is and she has been in the room and that she knows that he tries to help in his own way. He stiffens in place but she keeps her voice calm and sweet and soon she hears his tears and choking sobs buried in a pillow. What an awful way to live. She tells him her plans and holds him tight and soothes his tears. She will free this house. She will free him from this devil’s deal he made so long ago, but he will have to make up the way he ignored the disappearance of those girls the same way every other person in this house will have to. He breathes deeply and she can feel him shaking where she holds him tight. He nods and agrees and she kisses him tenderly on the shoulder.

When her husband returns the next morning he finds her in bed and mounts her quickly, barely noticing the new bite mark in her neck. When he is done, no pleasure given to her, he asks her how the time without him has been. Oh just standard dear. Lots of lying around. He nods and kisses her and goes to get dressed and she buries a smile in her pillow. The next few weeks are more fun than she has ever had. She shares secret smiles with her servants and watches from afar as her husband feels his control slipping through his fingers. There are so many little things that upset him, and she is covered for by so many servants that are enjoying watching their master be cuckolded and humiliated. Oh the amusement there is in how the servants respond so much more slowly to his orders, to how they stare and giggle when he goes around corners, how his once-loyal footmen look at him with disdain, how his butler listens to his woes with a straight face that barely hides a smirk. 

He gets more irrational, of course, and his violence towards her increases. He beats her bloody on more than one occasion, his control slipping on his own mind as it slips on his house. The day he beats her until she spits out a tooth into the sink and stares at her own mottled face is the day she decides that this is it. She waits until her husband has business and finds the butler, tells him to spread the word that it is time. Then she drags the butler to her bedroom, readies the fire poker beneath the pillow, and they proceed to play at copulation. She screams his name in delight and hears her husband tear down the hall. The door slams open and when she looks at him over the butler’s shoulder he is scarlet red with fury but frozen in shock. No filthy words spill from his lips this time, he cannot find the mind to speak.

He strides forward to beat them, to intervene, and when he gets close enough she takes the poker from behind them and slams it into his body. He crumples to the side, a stunned look on his face, and she stands up from the butler’s embrace and advances on him. The butler follows, taking his own weapon from the fireplace. Her husband shouts and spit in fury, tries to get up but she hits him again and hears a bone break under the iron. He screams and turns like the coward he is, crawling from the room. They follow slowly. They let him get to the stairs and she strikes him across the back and he tumbles down the stairs, rolling head over heels until he is sprawled in the hallway. The servants emerge from their hiding places, weapons in hand, and he stares up at them all with emerging horror as they do not go to intervene, happy to watch him suffer. She descends the stairs with her butler behind her and her flock of maids converging in step behind her. Her husband splutters and snarls but he begs as well now and she can’t bear it. How dare he ask for mercy when he gave those girls no mercy and was willing to so the same to her. She smashes his leg when he tries to kick at her. He doesn’t need much more. She lets her rage fill her and when the red fades from her vision he is lying still and cold and very bloodied. She lets the maids pull the poker from her grip and guide her to a chair where she sits and stares at the body on the floor until they cover it with a tablecloth. The blood still seeps through it. Eventually she is clear headed enough to give orders.

They wait until the night to take his body out in the carriage to the road he’d take home. They dump him and the carriage and make it look like he was robbed and beaten. She moves her forged will to his lockbox. They empty the room and bury the girls in the garden, plant roses over their bodies. She locks the door for the last time and buries the key with the bodies. They pile junk across the door and keep it that way and then when the magistrate arrives with the terrible news she sniffles stoically and waits for them to leave to burst into laughter. It is hers. Everything is hers. That night the cook prepares the entire house a beautiful meal. After they have eaten but before they imbibe too much wine she addresses them all. Lays out her new rules. This will not be the house that her husband owned. No more people will be hurt. Those who prefer to make a house like that should leave, quickly. There are more roses to nourish. 

That night she lies in bed and thinks about her plan. If this were a fairytale, she would burn this house to the ground and return home. This isn’t a fairytale. There is nothing useful about all this money and furniture and space going up in smoke. She has a house here that could house possibly another twenty people. Perhaps more, if she doubled up rooms. She has access to the entire family inheritance which is more money than anyone in her village has ever seen or heard of, and there is money in the very walls of this house. Instead, she will make this a home for people who need it. In the morning one of the footman and a gardener have packed up and left, but the rest of the servants are there. They look at with sorrow and guilt and fear and she tells them what she is going to do. Her family come for the funeral, as do so many other rich pretentious people. Her family look at her bruises and she sees the silent apologies in their eyes and she forgives them. They didn’t know what he was. They just wanted a better life for their daughter. After the funeral she announces her plans to open her home to the needy and outcast, in the name of her husband. The murmurs that go through the crowd are those of people who knew that he would have rather died than help anyone but himself but they cannot speak ill of the dead or of such a virtuous, unselfish plan.

She gets the servants to help her: to catalogue everything in the house and work through it. Room by room she separates out what will be useful or important and what is ostentatious frippery, and then they invite collectors and experts and auctions houses to browse to their heart’s content. Within days they have made more money than her family will ever make and enough to start turning the house into a boarding house. She keeps the hothouse and the music rooms, the baths and the stables, the workshops and tearooms. They will need places to relax, but they don’t need art galleries or a solarium or a smoking room or so many ballrooms. She makes classrooms and nurseries and playrooms and workshops instead. Useful things. Useful places. She is so tired of sitting around and doing nothing. They work tirelessly and soon the mansion is ready to be a home for so many. She asks her families for the names of people who need a home in their village and through them they find other people. Young servant girls who can’t say who the father of their child is (everyone knows it’s the master or the master’s son or an older servant but who would believe her over them), widows and widowers, the wives and children of abusers, drunkards and gamblers, those with disabilities and injuries that need long-term care, anyone who needs a home and food and care. She hires another cook, some more maids, a housekeeper to keep the house running and under a strict eye, midwives and doctors to make regular house visits and train the maids to help, house guards as well to protect against those who would come and reclaim their victims.

Soon enough they start to arrive. Women with babies in their arms, women cradling heavy bellies, beaten and starved families, elderly people on walking sticks, beggars on crutches. They come by the carriage load and she gives them beds and baths and food and a place to be safe. Soon the halls are full with voices and laughter, the once-dusty pianos being played clumsily but delightedly, the libraries full of voices stumbling over the words, little pattering footsteps in the hall and in the classrooms where a chorus of children and adults learn their ABCs. At the breakfast table people eat heartily and well, becoming a family that cares for one another, that jokes and supports and talks. When a baby is born they celebrate in droves, the women acting as midwives as well. When a person dies, they mourn. Birthdays, holidays, church services held in the family church, at bedsides for those who can’t.

The house saves people. Young women who would be outcasts before get the chance to learn and train themselves for better lives. Women who have children get new names and moved to better places, better jobs. Those who are alone get a family. Those that can’t afford medicine get cared for and sent back into the world healed and well. They have a steady stream of people coming and going and it is a good place. It is a safe place. One footman tries to assault a girl and he is overwhelmed by the maids and dragged before the magistrate within a day. It is a wonderful system. The house is a wonderful place. This is no longer a house where victims are preyed upon. This is a house that saves people. 

CODAS:

Men think women all alike, on a spectrum from harem to home, but there is great variety.

CODA 1:  
The prince never stops at her farm. He passes by and she sees him from the field on his beautiful horse. He goes to the next village and finds his next wife. She hears of the wedding and the party on the vines of village gossip. The next she hears of it, he has married a rich lady from another town, no mention of his previous wife. She grows and forgets it and marries the blacksmith’s son who smiles at her bashfully and makes her their ring and they have two beautiful babies and they live happily if frugally.

CODA 2:  
The night he leaves, she packs her bags. She leaves the ring and takes nothing but her own bits. The servants stare at her as she leaves but they say nothing. She will not let him ensnare her. She walks the miles back to the nearest village, then hitches a ride back to her hometown. Her family stare when she returns but they don’t ask. They see the fear in her eyes. He does not come back for her. She never marries. She lives in her parents house and cares for them until they grow old and die, and then she lives a frugal life as an old maid until she dies alone but safe. 

CODA 3:  
She goes into the room. She can’t help herself. She forgets all her stories in the encroaching fear and need to know. The key stains red and she panics and when her husband returns he is vicious in his destruction of her. He drags her into that room and she never comes out.

CODA 4:  
She plans and schemes but the night she goes to put it in motion she finds that the servants have beat her to it. Her husband lays at their feet, bloodied and broken by their weapons and they do not raise them against her, but she senses they surely would if she did not leave. She tries to beg, to plead, but they refute her begging with disgusted sneers. She feels their revulsion, that she was so willing to use them as pawns against her husband. The butler laughs cold and hard.  
"What are we to you? Animals? Less than that? Furniture? Did you forget what you were so soon?"  
She tries to plead with them but they will not listen.  
"I'd care for you all! There would be space!"  
"You would care for us? Who has washed your clothes? Cooked your food? Washed your body? What could you do for us we have not already done for you?" You think you will come here and just rescue us as though we were are children? We don't need you."  
She tries to leave with something, anything, but they raise their weapons and make it clear that she came with nothing and she would leave with nothing. They do not believe she deserves a coin of it. She runs from the house barefoot and alone.

CODA 5:  
She wakes in the night once, when her husband is sleeping so deeply that she doubts an earthquake could wake him. There is a woman in white standing at the end of her bed. It is one of the servant girls from the Room, eyes wide and burning with vengeance. There is a voice in her head, echoing and ancient and creaking and she knows it is not the servant’s. It is the House itself. In a deep hideous tone it tells her what she needs to do if she wants to leave alive. It tells her who she needs to give up. She wastes no time. She takes a knife from the kitchens and starts with her husband. She slits his throat with barely a whisper and the house groans its approval. She moves down through the house: to the butler’s room, the footman, the valet, the housekeeper, the cook, the gamekeeper, the groundskeeper. Each one she slits their throats silently and quickly, leaving them in their beds. The House creaks and scrapes as though the very foundations are moving and she sits in her bedroom and lets the blood from her hands leach into the floorboards. She can feel its joy, its sated hunger. She has fed it more than it has had in years. When she finally sleeps, she dreams of the door to the Room, blood pouring from under it. In the morning she wakes to an empty bed and she knows where exactly the House has taken her husband’s body. There is much to do though. So many servants to replace. She is the lady of the House, after all. 

CODA 6:  
When she prepares to strike her husband, the butler gets there first. He grabs the poker and throws it across the room and before she can say anything he has her in his grasp, holding her tight. Her husband is smiling, delighted in his own fury that she would dare defy him. She tries to fight the butler's hold but he holds her so tight. her husband goes for her feet and together they haul her down the stairs. She sacrifices her dignity now, she screams and begs but the servants watch from the rafters and say nothing. The maids wait outside the room in silence, preparing what they will need to clean up. Mops, hot water, carbolic soap, sheets, a hamper for the master's clothes. They shut their ears for all the long hours it takes.

That night some of them whisper to each other. Could she have done it? No. Don't be stupid. She was a stupid farm girl. She was destined to die. She's the first, and hardly the last, and every servant knows, so long as the brides keep coming and going, they are safe. His attentions are on those unfortunates, and away from his staff. They are invisible; safe. The girls who died broke the pact. They all make a pact. You don't draw attention to yourself. You don't offer up another girl. Those girls died and more will die and those left will have food and shelter and stability.

Outwardly, the house is peaceful, but really it is bloated with sin and monstrous deeds. Blood seeps between the floorboards at night and stains the carpets but the servants dutifully clean them every morning, wash the handprints off their Master's clothes. Wipe up the bloody footprints that appear on the dark wood floors. If they just scrub hard enough they can convince themselves too; the house is peaceful, the house is safe. The last few days, a new ghost has emerged. They all know her. Her footprints walk from her workshop to her bedroom to the bedrooms of the girls who betrayed her. Each wakes in the night with tear drops on their cheeks and blood on their sheets and the smell of metal and rust is thick around them. The butler finds himself caught in hideous dreams as well, though he doesn't speak of them. To be ridden by a nightmare is a hideous thing, to have that nightmare be the corpse of the girl you used and betrayed is hideous even more.


End file.
